The London Times published July 22 this article by Richard Harris: "Any sort of balanced picture of (Communist) China at this moment is an impossibility. No objective journalists have been admitted to the country for many years past. The evidence on which most opinions about (Communist) China must be formed - what the (Communist) Chinese themselves tell us in their official media - has never been so sparse and unrevealing.
"When at last the ninth party congress met in April, 1969, students of (Communist) China all told themselves that at last a new China, clear in outline, precise in policy, would emerge, led by a younger generation who had come up through the sifting of the cultural revolution. That expectation has been disappointed. Whatever Mao Tse-tung intended to bring to birth in three years of revolutionary turmoil has still not taken shape.
"Indeed, if one looks at a country supposedly run by a communist party and by the subsidiary organs that come under the party - the trade unions, the youth league, the women's organization and all the other labels that include everybody in - what exists? The party itself is a long way from being reconstituted. The mass organization all disappeared early in the cultural revolution as revisionist bodies dominated by the Liu Shao-ch'i leadership and little has been heard about their resuscitation. The transformation of the revolutionary committees that were left by the cultural revolution is incomprehensibly slow. Indeed, since the party congress, four of the provincial committee chairmen have fallen from grace for unexplained reasons.
"If one statistic could sum up the balance sheet of the cultural revolution it could be the tally of the ministers and vice-ministers who survive, one quarter only of those who held office in 1966. A comparable number of senior members of the party suffered and one must not forget the earlier siftings made by Chairman Mao from the anti-rightists campaign of 1959 onwards; no heads lost ever, but a lot of disgruntled men sceptical of their leader must now be about.
"What damage this has done to the party and government can only be guessed at. What does seem undeniable is the damage to the country's ethos. Back in 1949, in the early months of communist rule, you could offer a porter a tip and be would hand it back to you not with the air of a man who had been told he must not accept tips; on the contrary he seemed to have a vision of public service and the dignity of labor that had quite replaced the bitter and taxing business of keeping alive. In the (Communist) China of those days corruption and dishonesty were purged not by fist but by the powerful conviction of the party's evangelists.
"The spirit seems to have gone. Theft, corruption, apathy ... seeped through 'again in face of the confusion and disloyalty evoked by the cultural revolution. And to bring (Communist) China back to the old discipline now there are no credible evangelists, only the rough justice of the tribunal and exemplary executions. This is the method - for which plenty of first-hand evidence reaches Hongkong from neighboring Kwangtung province. There is no reason to think that Kwangtung province is exceptional.
"Most students of (Communist) China would agree that information about the country has never been so scanty since it came to power in 1949. Some people ask who are the coming men? The honest answer would be that no one known under 65 could be put in that category at all. If they exist and they are coming - and they must be - we know absolutely nothing about them. Culturally the scene is equally blank. No new novels, no new films, no plays, no life of the spirit breaking through the arid orthodoxy of a Maoist view of literature and the arts. Behind the ready handshakes and the brisk manner there are vast areas of silence, perhaps vast areas of boredom. After 21 years of the new (Communist) China a second new (Communist) China has not emerged." (Partial text)
Long Island Press - Secret student revolt
The Long Island Press published August 2 a special report by Dennis Bloodworth from Singapore: "A secret student revolt mounted by a clandestine 'World Freedom Party' is rippling across (Red) China in protest against the exigencies of the Maoist state, Chinese arriving in Hong Kong confide.
"The organization is said to be about 10,000 strong in the neighboring Chinese province of Kwangtung alone, where local authorities suspect it of being responsible for starting a series of recent fires. The group claims to have recruited followers throughout the country, and according to an independent report, the police discovered its existence in Shanghai several months ago when a student charged with other offenses was caught with a copy of its regulations and a party badge on him.
"The slogans of the movement call on all to 'oppose Mao Tse-tung' and to demand 'freedom for students.' Its posters, quietly plastered over official announcements during the dark hours, define this as freedom from slavish study of Mao's commandments and from the 'down-to-the-country' drive which sweeps the young out of the schools and the cities and into the farms to do manual labor and 'learn from the poor peasants.'
"Earlier this month the Peking People's Daily and Radio Peking urged more students to join this exodus to the farms. Millions had already obeyed when Mao gave new impetus to the migration 18 months ago, but now 'tens of millions of young intellectuals must be trained in the countryside in order to consolidate the dictatorship of the proletariat.'
"Resistance was always widespread, however. In Shanghai three youths out of every 10 refused to 'volunteer' and in Canton the reluctant went into hiding by the hundred. Of those who did as they were told, thousands subsequently filtered back into the towns where they often had to steal to eat, for their ration cards were invalidated.
"Escapees who slipped across the border into Hong Kong told of back-breaking work they were ordered to do in fields far from home, and of their humiliation at the hands of an irate, unwashed peasantry that often regarded them as stuck up and soft.
"When students and intellectuals arrive down at the distant communes to which they have been sent, every attempt is made to 'save' them from their 'sins.' They undergo strict class re-education and are taught, as the Maoist press relates, 'whom to love and whom to hate.
"In some communes, officially classified 'poor peasants' form 'Red Pairs' with the students so that each youth has a constant corrective companion responsible for 're-educating the educated,' and soldiers are often much in evidence to see that the newcomers remain receptive.
"For the first time since 1966, when Peking decided 'to reform completely the educational system and to postpone the student enrollment program,' it appears that (Red) China's universities may open fully for normal business during the coming academic year. It is reported from Canton that middle school graduates have been asked to fill in forms indicating whether they would like to continue their education, work in a factory or work on a farm.
"This week the authoritative Red Flag urged that a more lenient view be taken of politically dubious college staffs because 'their professional knowledge and experience still have a role to play.' The paper had earlier hinted that students sent down to the country might not, after all, be expected to stay there forever but only for two or three years. The implication is that the short-staffed universities will resume courses and students will return to the towns to attend them.
"The universities themselves have been ‘re-educated’ and revolutionized, if a little unevenly. Some now have their own experimental workshops or ties with local factories and others run model farms. These could provide youngsters with practical bench and barnyard experience as part of their curriculum." (Full text)
Toronto Telegram - Book on Marshall
The Telegram of Toronto Canada, published July 30 a special article by Lubor J. Zink: Discussing pressures for forcing a 'coalition government' on South Vietnam I mentioned yesterday that the loss of mainland China to the totalitarians was due, to a considerable extent, to U.S. insistence on a Nationalist-Communist coalition.
"A detailed account of that monumental mistake of American foreign policy in the late 1940s is now available in John Robinson Beal's new book, Marshall in China, published by Doubleday in Toronto and New York.
"A retired American journalist who lives in Ottawa, Jack Beal is no stranger to the Canadian reading public. As Time's bureau chief in Ottawa until 1966, his coverage of the Canadian scene set a high standard for Canadian section of the magazine his biography of Lester Pearson, published both in Canada and the in 1964, attests to his skill in blending detailed personal observation with wide-ranging political insight.
The subject of Mr. Beal's new gives this blend a virtually unlimited scope.
'The core of the book is the Journal Beal kept while he had for over a year in 1946 and 1947 as adviser to the Republic of la government while General George C. Marshall was trying to carry out his mission, given him by Truman administration, of bringing the warring Kuomintang and communist forces into a coalition of national unity.
"The political insight comes in Beal's comment on the raw material his meticulous chronicling of events and personalities on the eve Communist seizure of power in China.
"When Mr. Beal went to China 1946 on a leave of absence from Time magazine Washington bureau, he shared the then prevailing impression of Mao Tse-tung's Communism as an agrarian reform movement functioning as 'just another local political party.'
"The book, even without the hindsight comments, gives a day-to-day account of Beal's gradual realization of the fundamental misconception of this impression which, unfortunately, continues to linger in minds of many well-meaning but naive or confused people to this day.
"'We were innocents abroad,' says former U.S. Ambassador Robert D. Murphy in his introduction to Beal's book, 'concerned with promoting the unity of China in the interest of world stability.
"'The fact that the Chinese Communists were dead set against our brand of Chinese unity never seemed to occur to us at the time ... '
"The misunderstanding of the nature and the goals of the Chinese branch of international Communism led to American suspension of military and economic assistance to the Republic of China when the Marshall mission failed.
"The arms embargo was imposed at the moment when Mao's forces got hold of practically all the captured Japanese arms and started receiving additional eq4ipment from the Soviet Union.
"'It is safe to assert,' writes Murphy, 'that the U.S. would not be involved in Vietnam today, nor would it have had to fight in Korea without that development.'
"Beal comes to the same conclusion. Says he: 'The fallacy that peace can be promoted by withdrawing support from one side, lest you 'feed a civil war,' was clearly demonstrated in China.
"'The U.S. withdrew its support, but the war continued, until the Communists overran the mainland...
"'You can't fight ideas with bullets,' the U.S. kept telling China blinded by propaganda to the fact that it was bullets the Communists were using. Their ideology had already lost out to democracy in the competition for the minds of the independents (who entered the Republic's national assembly despite Communist pressures on them to boycott the budding parliamentary process).
"'Yet the same fallacy infected U.S. thinking 20 years later with respect to Vietnam.'
"In his concluding chapter Beal describes the effect of the U.S. arms embargo after the collapse of the Marshall mission:
"'Many nationalist units were literally down to one, two and three rounds of ammunition per man, and without any prospect of further supply they were deserting or surrendering...
"'There were some in the (U.S.) Congress who did advocate backing Chiang Kai-shek at the time of Marshall's departure. They were suspected of wanting to embroil the U.S. in a civil conflict...
"'Conceivably - one can never be dogmatic about 'what might have happened' in international affairs - it might have resulted in a friendly China as far north as the Yellow River instead of a mainland overrun by implacable hostile foes...
"'There come times when a people submerged in a flood of Communist propaganda depicting and wildly enlarging on their shortcomings sorely need public assurance that someone believes their fight to resist Communist enslavement is worthwhile.
"'It was true in China at the end of 1946; it became true again in South Vietnam.'
"Though perhaps burdened with unnecessary detail, the book is well worth reading as a fascinating footnote to one of the major upheavals of our time." (Full text)
Boston Globe - Which comes first?
The Boston Globe published August 9 this article by John Roderick from Tokyo: "More than a year after Mao Tse-tung set about rebuilding his shattered Communist party it remains divided over which comes first: the chicken of Mao thought or the egg of organization.
Though the question may seem minor to outsiders, it is central to the future of the philosophy that three years of cultural revolution sought to impose on Red China.
That philosophy basically is Chinese Stalinism: belt-tightening and strict controls domestically, and a hostile posture toward the United States and Russia. Its survival depends on a slavish acceptance of Mao's ideas by the mainland's 700 million people.
Mao tore the party apart in 1966-69 in order to get at his enemies lurking within the structure. With the close of the cultural purge in May 1969 and the elimination of his rivals, led by President Liu Shao-chi, Mao set about restoring the party edifice.
The question which seems to nag party leaders is that of priority: should new party members first pass through the eye of the Maoist needle, proving themselves pure ideologically, or should primary emphasis be placed on restoring the party organizationally while turning a tolerant eye toward political imperfections?
A July issue of the theoretical Journal Red Flag answers the question from Mao's viewpoint.
"'Our party,' it said, 'is a proletarian party, the vanguard of the proletariat. Only by arming party organizations with Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung thought will we be able to insure the implementation of chairman Mao's revolutionary line...
The problem is acute because the cultural purge so completely gutted the party and its 17 million members. Millions are believed to have been purged. More than half the party's ruling body, the 195-member Central Committee, fell before the savage criticism of the revolution.
Filling the gaps seems to have been a big task. There also appears to have some difficulty over party members who, having subjected themselves to criticism and self-criticism, want to rest on their oars.
"'Some party members are satisfied because they have passed inspection and will not go on summing up their experiences and raising their standards,' said Red Flag. 'They think they have been inspected and criticized. Since they have gone through all of this, there will be no more trouble.'
This sentence may give a clue to the unexplained disappearance from the public eye of two prominent party men.
"Foreign Minister Chen Yi was inspected and criticized' on a number of occasions during the cultural revolution. His sin perhaps was that he retained his wit and his cool. Or more likely his nimble brain could not keep a tight rein on a quick tongue. Some of the things he said during his self-criticism could be taken as stabs at the Mao elite. His functions have been taken over by Vice Premier Li Hsien-nien.
Security chief Hsieh Fu-chih's yanishing act is more difficult to explain. As a member of the Polit-bureau he had his finger on the dossiers of many prominent Chinese. It is tempting to speculate that he and Chen Yi differed with Mao over rebuilding the party, but there is no solid evidence yet to back this.
What is evident, judging from Red Flag, is that the party is split by 'unprincipled struggle between factions of mountain stronghold mentality, sectarianism and bourgeois factionalism.' In other words, the winners tend to wreak revenge on the losers concentrating on building up their own little power centers and laying down their own party line.
Mao has had to make some compromises, as he did with his revolutionary experiment in education. In that instance he decided that the workers, peasants and teachers couldn't run the universities and schools alone, after all. He called on the bourgeois intellectual teachers to lend a hand.
On the party front, he has decreed that party members who 'made mistakes, including those who have made serious mistakes,' can be groomed for party membership. That could mean a new life for millions of purged party rank and file.
We must concentrate on changing them and pushing them forward stressing ideological struggle and basing our confidence on the capability of the mighty power of Mao Tse-tung thought to transform people's souls,' said Red Flag.
"Put more cynically, it would appear that Mao has decided, under the circumstances, to make the best of a bad situation." (Full text)
Washington News - Freedom pays off
The Washington Daily News published August 4 a report by Ray Cromley: "Arthur Burns, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, is known to exert a very strong personal influence on President Nixon's economic thinking.
"Therefore, some data on economic growth in Asia which the Federal Reserve Board has privately put together, and Mr. Burns' conclusions from that data are worth recording...
"The Burns conclusions can be stated as follows:
"The Asian countries that had the slowest growth rates from 1955 to 1968 were those that leaned most heavily on centralized economic controls. They either rejected the free market or severely limited it. (These countries were Ceylon, Burma, India and Indonesia.)
"The countries of Asia that relied basically on free markets and avoided government centralization of economic decision have been winning the economic contest. (These are South Korea, Japan, Nationalist China, Thailand, Hongkong and Malaysia, which increased their real output by 6 to 10 per cent a year.)...
"If the Federal Reserve data is representative and the Burns conclusions accurate, this would mean that over the long run centralized economies - such as the Soviet Union, Communist China and other totalitarian regimes - will inevitably in the long run be unable to compete with those free countries of the West which resist the temptation to set up widespread centralized controls over their economies.
"If the free world can, over the long pull, far outdistance the communist world economically, what tremendous implication does this have for foreign policy? It raises the question of how far economic policy (as in Europe under the Marshall Plan) can substitute for military intervention to save a country from communist or other totalitarian takeover." (Partial text).
The Daily News published August 1 this article by Ray Cromley: "The final barrier to a settlement in the Middle East may turn out to be neither Egypt nor Israel, but a bevy of terrorist groups aided and abetted by Communist China.
"Over the past several months, contacts in Hong Kong with sources on the mainland have repeatedly informed me that Mao Tse-tung and his advisers are now regularly supplying arms, supplies and guerrilla instructors to Middle East commando and subversive groups.
"In messages sent through his Middle East agents, Mao has made no secret of the fact that his aim is to prevent a peaceful settlement and to promote a protracted people's war aimed at overthrowing virtually all established governments in the Middle East, both Arab and Israeli, whatever their complexion.
"Most groups Mao is aiding are violent, anti-government and uncooperative. The Red Chinese are not even working with mainstream Communist parties, which are mostly loyal to Moscow in the Mideast. Where Peking deals with Communists, it is with terrorist splinters.
"Mao's officials in their instructions make it clear that Peking's best interests will be served best at present by keeping the Middle East in turmoil through long-term, slow paced, widespread guerrilla war.
"The data indicate these major Red Chinese activities:
"-Funds and advisers to extremist students in Egypt and other Arab lands.
"-Arms, funds and instructors of the terrorist Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The leader of this group, Naif Hawatmeh, has declared his allegiance to Maoist precepts. Some of his guerrillas carry Mao's little Red Book.
"-Funds, supplies, arms and guerrilla instructors for the Dhofari guerrillas in Dhofar and South Aden on the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula. Dhofaris are also being sent to (Red) China for training. The Communist Chinese supplies are known to arrive by way of Aden and Mukalla. This is the old Dhofar Liberation Front which now is called The Popular Front for the Liberation of the Occupied Arab Gulf.
"-Arms, funds and supplies for Al Fatah, the Palestine Liberation Organization. The PLO has had an office in Peking since 1965, but that office has been active only since last year.
"-Some sort of working relationship with the Revolutionary Organization of the Tudeh Party in Iran, a violent offshoot of the Iranian Communist Party, the Revolutionary Leadership Faction of the Sudan Communist Party and a new splinter group in the Syrian Communist Party." (Full text)